The Prison System Fails Twice - On the Inside and After Release

Will Fruin: Good morning. Today is March 3rd. I have the pleasure of speaking to Mike Knox. Mike Knox is a comedian, writer, and a retired parole agent. How are doing today?
Mike Knox: Good. you doing? Thanks for having me.
Will Fruin: Doing very well. I love the directness of when you speak. It's just like you're so precise. It's like you want to get the point across with the minimal amount of verbiage.
Mike Knox: I'm working on it. That's what I'm trying to do. And I think a lot of that has to do with working in the community for so long is that you have a, when you're a parole agent, you have a caseload of people. I have hundreds of people that I have to track down every day. And so time is of the essence. And so you're always kind of cutting corners. Same with when I worked in a prison, it's the same thing. You're trying to house, you know, house guys, hundreds of people. So it's all, it's time management pretty much.
Will Fruin: Did you find it to be, when you actually interact with them, you didn't want them to keep asking you questions. So you closed up or you wrapped up the whole bow of what you were saying as precise as you could.
Mike Knox: Yeah, because you would have, especially in prison, you would have, you you walk into a housing unit and you have 200 guys screaming at you because they're just waiting there in cages. And so what I would say to them is if I didn't you get to know them. So if I didn't know them, I would say, hey, just write a note for me at the end of the day, put the note on the side of the door or the food port and I'll pick it up and whatever I can try to do, I'll do. And that always that was a system that always worked for me. Other people didn't work for them. Other people, you know, other officers would walk. the door and start screaming at them or, but I just saw that early on was the being kind of patient and not getting angry. I think we were all taught to be angry first. think
Will Fruin: Mm-hmm.
Mike Knox: being firm, fair and consistent always worked better for me.
Will Fruin: How did it feel when you or what was the type of feedback that you really noticed from the inmates when you were having that dialogue? Because one of thing is, is that they have plenty of time. You don't.
Mike Knox: Yeah, I just noticed I wasn't getting stabbed. I was like, in the beginning, I'm like, oh, this is working for me because they're not attacking me.
Will Fruin: you
Mike Knox: Uh, cause going into prison, it's everything you've seen. It's all fear because it's everything that you've seen on TV. Uh, and prison is a lot of boredom. It's a lot of downtime. It's like, you know, 99 % boredom with that 1 % of exhilaration. Um, you know, just full on adrenaline fear. Uh, when you're in the middle of a, you know, a riot or you're watching somebody get stabbed. You do watch, it's prison, so you watch people die, unfortunately.
Will Fruin: Hmm. Yeah, it's, I worked in prison for about three months. I told you that I worked over at Lyman over in Colorado and I was like, Nope, I don't want to be here. I don't know which one's worse is the inmates or the, the officers. And I just remembered, I was like, I need to get out of here.
Mike Knox: It was definitely the officers because the officers were the ones that voluntarily were going there. And that's was my conclusion. Like, I don't know if you saw this, but you would see them fighting after work, you know, or in front of the inmates, they'd be fighting in front of the inmates. And I just always thought like, we're getting paid to do this. You know, you can always step away from it. The inmates couldn't step away from it. And just as the longer that I did it, I didn't want to do it either, but I was just like, where else am I going to go right now to be able to. pretty much afforded insurance, but I did, I wanted to quit every day. I just had a goal to be, to try to be a parole agent. And I had kind of been, when I got into it, I had been lied to. was doing a internship and probation and probation told me if you want to be a parole agent, you've got to go work in a prison, which wasn't true, but I didn't have the, I didn't have, I couldn't Google anything at the time. And then I didn't know probation and parole didn't know what they did. Vice versa, the jails and the prisons don't know what they do. So. You they told me you have a college degree. You won't even be around the inmates, which wasn't true either. So once. then when I got there, I was like, this is really fascinating. So I was just kind of collecting information. I wrote a book about it. And that's what I looked at. I just looked at it like, try to use this to the time that I'm here to my advantage. But it is very depressing. I totally agree with that.
Will Fruin: So when you actually became that parole agent, it's how was that? How was it actually that transition? What were some of the things that when you got into that field that like, you're like, shit, how come we were not actually taking care of this stuff?
Mike Knox: Yeah, I think the big thing with, so parole and prison don't talk to each other and you wouldn't know the difference. Like a lot of times you have parole agents that never worked in a prison, so they don't know what the prison is. And then you have the people in the prison that they don't know what parole is. So what they'll do is they'll just release somebody from, they'll release the inmate and say your parole agent is going to take care of everything, which isn't true at all. And I thought that too, and I would always hear that at the prison. Don't worry, the parole agent knows everything. They're going to give you all this money and they're going to give you housing and insurance and they're going to help you get your driver's license. All this stuff that you were like, okay, they're going to take care of me, which isn't true at all. So the transition to the pro-legion was great because I got out of the prison for me and the first probably year it was great. But then I just was realizing how much politics were at play. And then I was, I was like, this is just as pretty much as worse as the prison. I'm just, you know, at least I'm out of the prison and you're getting paid more. But, and you are helping people, but the resources aren't really there because. None of the state has any of the contracts. So if somebody gets out of prison, there's nothing I really, I have to take them to a private institution to get them housed or, you know, sort of, I have to take them to, you know, if they need like medical attention, I'm taking them outside of parole and I don't have any control over it. And what they should be doing is there should be a place where there's housing immediately when somebody gets released from prison that's run by parole or run by the department of corrections. And that simply just doesn't exist. They say that it does, but it doesn't exist.
Will Fruin: So I'm curious about your perspective on this. So when a person gets out of prison or out of jail, how difficult is it for them to be able to find a regular job or a job that they can be able to make a few dollars in, do their upkeep reading, not going back to prison or jail?
Mike Knox: I think that there's a lot of factors to it. think it's very, yes, it is very difficult because you're getting out of prison, you've got to go get a job, the police have taken away your driver's license, any sort of form of identification. So first you've got to go to the DMV and try to get your identification, but you don't have identification to get identification. So that presents problems. And then you've been spending all this time in prison, so you've got to... You've got to then say, if they run a background check on you, you've got to say, well, I've been in prison and explain why. So now you've lowered your kind of the chances of what kind of job that you're going to get. and it's not going to, probably not going to pay a lot. so you're basically starting all over again. The other side though, is that what I would see as a parole agent is they just wouldn't show up for job interviews. I would get them a job interview and they wouldn't show up for it. And so was, a lot of it was the mentality of it, but, but the other side was yes. the resources aren't there. There should be again. Because in the prison, there's jobs that they can have, and that should be the same when they're on the outside of, these are considered parole jobs. It's just a transition. But you've really just kind of thrown them out and said, hey, go figure it out yourself. And these are people that they haven't had a good track record of figuring things out for themselves. And I was more than willing to try to help them, but my hands were tied a lot just with basic resources that weren't there. you know, in the beginning, I would buy it with my own money. I would buy a jacket for them or a tent. But then I would realize they would just sell it for drugs. And so I'm at a loss and I can't support, you know, tense $40 a jackets, $20, whatever. It just built it. I ran out of money way too quickly and I had to stop doing that.
Will Fruin: Do you believe that there could be a program like almost like a three quarter house or halfway house that if you're getting people out of prison, but then people that have been successful with actually getting back on their feet or successful ish because successful looks very differently to everybody by having like a mentor or something that is like a low cost type of job, but they're actually able to help promote them the wellbeing, get back forward.
Mike Knox: Yeah, they could easily do that. you know, it was just very sad. I mean, one of the things they don't even have for veterans, they don't even have anything like the prison doesn't track any of the veterans. So when they got out to parole, cause I wasn't in the military. So I just started to, I just thought one day, I'm to start asking because we had, we have a veterans campus that was close to the parole office. So I started to ask, Hey, were you in the military? And sure enough, I had a good 10 % that were, that had been in the military and they had no idea. So I could. get them in the car, drive them over to the campus, and then they're set up for housing, everything, because of the fact that they've been in the military. And that was great. But parole didn't, know, parole or the department of corrections didn't have that. And that part to me was frustrating because you have a population that you know, they need housing right away and there should, you know, we had empty offices in our building. You could have housed those guys temporarily. And it was, that was always laughed at. I would bring that up to my supervisors. Hey, there's this whole section of our building that they're empty offices. Why don't we house homeless people there? How dare you bring that up, you know? So I was always shut down for bringing up bright ideas, which is usually the case with law enforcement is you're just ostracized for trying to change things. Nobody really wants to change anything.
Will Fruin: Because to be fair, it's like when you have a class of people that have been deprived a long time of their rights, a lot of the individuals that I've, certainly understand about my social work is that they're products of their environment. They're products of what society has helped them were actually created with their parents. And I'm not giving them an excuse. I'm just saying this is part of the layering system. And if they're in there for like drug crimes or other things, it's about the instant gratification. If they're not having any type of purpose or actually having somebody help them have a leg up and show them anything, they've just been conditioned to be a worse individual. So how do we expect people that are in those shoes to become part of society again?
Mike Knox: Yeah. And, you know, what I would see is these are people that they've been lied to their whole life. So then here comes a
Will Fruin: I know.
Mike Knox: guy with a badge and they're supposed to now believe what I say. So it took a long, it's all, it was all about time. It took a long time for them to even gain trust. then my problem was I would gain their trust and then my supervisor would call and threaten them out of the blue for no reason, because my supervisor, you know, just He was, you know, thought that it was funny that he could, you know, he had the power to threaten the parolees. So he would call them up and threaten to send them back to prison. Or you would have the police department that would make sweeps. They wouldn't say anything to parole. So you had this great rapport with somebody and then the police comes and tears up their home. Well, now they don't have any trust in you. They don't believe anything again, what you say. And so you were always balancing things when it could have been so easy and it made it so hard. And the bottom line was just they didn't want to pay for it. They, know, all of these kind of things that are put into place, you know, all this money that's wasted in Los Angeles, you know, we had billions of dollars wasted to house 22 people, you know, and there's thousands of people that are homeless. They're right there in Skid Row. and, you know, you could easily solve it. They don't want to do it on purpose. I mean, they like the fact that you have people that are roaming around, that need mental health services and they do nothing about it.
Will Fruin: Because imagine if we had a society full of mobile, independent people that didn't need a place like Skid Row and everybody had a job. Like, why would we need police officers? Why would we need prisons?
Mike Knox: Yeah. even I just laughed too, because you have a police station that's right in Skid Row and they don't even do anything. I mean, they've changed all the laws in Los Angeles and let everybody, you know, nobody's held accountable for anything. And again, that's shocker. That's why crime goes up. But that's by design what the politicians want. Politicians want everybody confused and having to turn to them and, know, hey, if you just vote for me, then, you know, this crime will be solved. And here we are. You know, 10 years later, since they changed all these laws and nothing's changed. But again, that's that's why it works. And unfortunately, the the people that need the most help that I would see, especially with mental illness, I had a lot of mentally ill people in my case, a lot of a lot of people with epilepsy were having seizures and they were
Will Fruin: Ahem.
Mike Knox: just laughed at. And I would say, hey, this person needs help. And they would say, no, that person is just crazy. And so there is a huge stigma for mental health. And simply, they just don't want to do anything to help any of anybody. And it was frustrating for me because I would have a, I would have a, I would have somebody that would 51 50, a psych hold on somebody. And I would put place the person to handcuffs, take them to a psych ward and they could only be there three days.
Will Fruin: Mm-hmm.
Mike Knox: Which isn't enough time at all. There are a lot of people that needed to be there long-term and the state just simply didn't want to pay for it.
Will Fruin: It's very expensive. I went to an acute psychiatric unit for seven days over in Colorado. I went to a VA thing and I found out it's about stabilizing. And a lot of these people, like you're saying, they have all these mental health issues, quite a bit of it's also food deprived. Some of it is because of substance use that actually decayed the brain. Part of it is some of these people actually went, became homeless because of an addiction that they created based off of what a doctor gave them, what they got prescribed. And then, then the doctor said, Hey, I can't prescribe you anymore. The person starts feening. They start going out there and they lose everything else. And a lot of the people, don't empathize enough and say that some of these home, a lot of these homeless people, it's not because of choice. It's because of circumstances that they were dealt like a shitty hand or they didn't know how to process it. Maybe I'm just, it might be a sympathizer with them, but my heart goes out to these people.
Mike Knox: yeah, mine, I mean, mine did all the time. would have, you somebody on my caseload that, you know, the, the, boss would just say, well, send them to social services. And I would say, he literally can't fill out a social services form. can't stand in line to fill out a form, know, to stand in line to go fill out the form for social services to get benefits. so what I would see a lot of times is the people that didn't need benefits were the ones that were getting the benefits and the ones that really
Will Fruin: Mm-hmm.
Mike Knox: needed the benefits. Just their mind could not tell them how to go and process that. And. They were all kind of doing the same thing. I mean, they would be naked in a CVS and the police would be called and the police, you know, a lot of times would be only, I mean, I kind of always kind of chuckled at this, but it was like the solution for the police would be to shoot the guy. It wouldn't be
Will Fruin: Mm-hmm.
Mike Knox: like, Hey, maybe this guy's mentally ill cause he's naked in a CVS. but they were kind of always doing the same things because that's how our mind works. But nobody was, nobody was kind of saying, Hey, maybe there's a problem here. We should help these people. They're mentally ill, especially when you're going into psychosis. Whether it's drugs and like you were saying, a drug that then causes them to be mentally ill. They're not aware of what they're doing. They're not doing it. They're not doing, you know, those things on purpose. And that's something that I always saw too, was I never felt like they were personally attacking me, but there were other people that felt like it was personal. And I always looked at it like this is, you know, you've got to really focus one person at a time. And was that just what, one person on your caseload that could take all day long? But the answer that I always get from my supervisor was take him to jail. And that was it. That was the solution for everything.
Will Fruin: Like I told you before my personal interaction where I had that one sergeant that was actually two sergeants, guy replaced, both humanized my acute psychiatric unit, like my psychosis that was in. I had a suicide attempt and they humanized it. They humanized me being a person that was just hurting. And the other guy, the patrol officer, Which was taught like, Hey, this is what we got to do. We got to go hands on. have to be more aggressive. We have to shut them down by force. That's what I was feeling from him. That was the energy. And it sucks because what I needed was a human. I needed a person to really care about me. And I saw a video over here in actually just South me in Wyoming. There was a army veteran. did multiple tours overseas and his ex-girlfriend called the cops on him. What happened was is that the cops went in there, they had a job to do and they said, hey, we are going to take you in. And the guy was like, no, you're not taking me in. They were not listening to him. And they'll end up actually doing suicide by a cop because the cops had a certain perspective of what they wanted to do. They weren't actually hearing the person. And I believe if we start humanizing each other, even in those acute moments, It's not easy for the police at all. The police are actually giving a really rough deal. But I'm just saying, it's human eyes and nose type of mental health challenges.
Mike Knox: Yeah, I mean, even, you know, for me, my daughter has epilepsy and my boss would taunt me about my daughter's epilepsy. And it was something that really, really hurt me. And he didn't care. He just thought that it was funny and he was being funny. And he would tell me that I didn't understand humor because I was an old person, even though he was older than me. And that's what I saw all the time was that we just laughed in Los Angeles, at least we just laugh off anybody that has any sort of mental illness, any sort of anything where they can't, know, it's always. It just reminds me when I was younger, it's like, you just suck it up. And what I would see with law enforcement and also with military is that, you know, you, you are in these situations where you're in control of everything and people are depending on you. And then when you're not in those situations, like when I was, when I retired, I was just standing in the parking lot and I'm done with my job after 23 years, nobody was saying anything, no congratulations or anything like that. And the tables had turned. Well, you know, for the military, you know, you're overseas and then you come back and nobody is recognizing what you did or where you were at or what you were doing or what you were in control of. And so I see that in combination with law enforcement and military is that it's just, you know, you're just supposed to understand and everybody else is you're just you're just supposed to again, suck it up and do it, do what you're told. And if you're having a mental health crisis, you're having, you know, I've had good days and I've had bad days. And the police are very aggressive because that's what they're taught. And I was, I never had any training for being a parole agent. It was always about physically restraining people or firearms training. wasn't, Hey, let's sit down and talk to people and find out what's wrong with this person.
Will Fruin: So you mentioned Suck It Up and then you mentioned Suck It Up before we got on here. What does Suck It Up look like when people are in deer shoes or in police shoes?
Mike Knox: It just means do what I say. I don't want to hear it. That's what it means to me. You know, or as when I was a kid, it was walking off. You know, it was like I had a broken leg as a kid and parents and teachers are just telling you to walk it off. And you're like, no, my leg's broken and nobody wants to hear it. And I would that would just remind me of law enforcement was nobody wanted to hear your problems. And nobody especially wants to hear when you're mentally when you're mentally ill. You know, like right now, we have all this fraud going on. Everybody just wants to not talk about it. And, you know, you're those are that's tax money. And again, I would see that all the time with my job was so much waste. But if you brought it up, people would just tell you to shut up about it. You know, you were just told you're you're basically just a cog in the system told what to do.
Will Fruin: I guess what I was going to ask is like, why do you think that the law enforcement doesn't actually promote mental health awareness within their own people that work in there to be more mentally and physically sound?
Mike Knox: Because we're all mentally ill also. I mean, it reminds me of when they passed a law about spousal abuse that your gun was going to be taken away. If you were arrested, well, most of those people were law enforcement. So they had to change that law real quick because they had a felony in California. Then they had to change it to a misdemeanor. And then they had to kind of ignore it because there's a lot of unstable people that are in law enforcement. That's why they get into it. Most people are getting into it because they don't, you know, you didn't need a degree for it. And kind of they'll pass you right through. mean, there are a lot of people where it was like, I don't really know if this guy's, you know, got all his chromosomes or not. I don't think this guy should be working in this job, but they hired him. You know, when I went through my psych, the doctor that talked to me said, I don't think you should be working here. You're a little too intelligent. And that always stuck with me because he was kind of saying to me like, you don't want to be working in a prison. And I was too dumb to realize that. But the bottom line is they're just trying to get people to work those positions because really in reality, who wants to, who does want to work in, you know, as I started to work in law enforcement, I was like, who wants to do this job? cause it's a lot. And, so I do, I always say, you know, back the blue, but also those guys are kind of crazy. I've never had an interaction with police. That was a good one. They've always been horrible to me. And then when you tell people about that story, they always side with the police and say how wonderful the police are. So it's kind of one of those things in life that you really can't say much.
Will Fruin: It's like people get conditioned for it. Like I know when I've seen people that are police officers, they typically, when they're dealing with their struggles, alcohol becomes their best friend. If you mention, hey, what about therapy? They're like, nope, I'm not going to lose my job. I'm not going to lose my badge. I saw a dude that was from Texas. He was a captain out there and he was like, yeah, people with complex PTSD need to get pulled. And I'm like, what about their job? What about their identity? What about actually helping them out before we actually start pulling them? It's just easy to say, well, this cog is broken. How do we actually refurbish it or how do we actually fix it instead of actually just throw it away and not just go towards alcohol or spousal abuse or marital affairs?
Mike Knox: Yeah. And that's another, you with my job, you could be an alcoholic. That was okay. You couldn't go to therapy because if you go to therapy, they'll take your badge and your gun and then you lose your job. that's all that people would see as well. They told me I could drink. That's okay. And so you would have large amounts of people that were drinking. You'd see people that were drinking on the job because it was acceptable. And so I always kind of looked at it like, whatever you were told that was okay and to do, people were going to do it. They weren't going to kind of investigate for themselves. And you also, you get real dumbed down when you're working law enforcement. Nobody's really talking about anything at all. They're just talking about overtime. They're talking about, you know, what vacation they're going to take. Because again, it's a job and it's the office. So people don't really want to bring anything personal into anything. So you kind of, I look at it like a cult. You become this kind of cult follower. And then there's these little factions where you find people that you can, there's maybe a couple of people you can talk to that you think are, you you can trust, but most of the people you can't trust at all. So it gets very Icelandic.
Will Fruin: It sounds like it and what I would love to see and I know I don't have any sway in it yet and the reason I use yet is because macro social work they try to push certain different policies. I would love to see like mental health being provided for our patrol officers for the people that are in law enforcement so that alcohol doesn't become one of the number one crutches because to me when you have that type of abuse it's a symptom of something else that's below it. And it's easy to just be upset with the department, but how do we actually make it better? one, we don't have as many reckless people running around and two, that we can be able to, when they go back to their families, because I'm curious about this is when you worked as a pro-law officer, was it easy to tell your wife about what was happening? What your day to day looked like or when you worked in a prison?
Mike Knox: No, I just, and I wouldn't tell her just because I knew what the answer was gonna be. I would limit what I would say because it's a different world for her that she's in. Like when she relays stories about her office compared to mine, it's night and day, it's completely different. So I would just not bring it up just because there was so much violence in that job. And it was kind of a you're dealing with a different subculture of society, you know, dealing with gangs, drugs and prostitution and murders. You know, that's. She's not watching her coworkers beat each other to death, you know, so it was a little different. But that does then draw a line within your marriage when they don't understand, like for the prison, you got held in the prison. So there were a couple of times when I was first married where she didn't understand. Well, what do you I don't understand why would they hold you over for 16 hours? know, one time it was 20 hours. I don't understand why you can't leave. That doesn't make any sense. So it didn't make any sense. Same when you were at, you know, if I was at kind of parties, you know, when you're having kids, you're at these birthday parties. Nobody really wants to hear that you sell extracted somebody or that you took, know, I got in a fight when I was down at the County jail. Well, why are you down at County jail? Why would you fight somebody? So the other people don't really understand that they don't want to really want to hear it. They have their own perception. A lot of people just feel sorry for criminals. They're not really feeling sorry for the cops. So you just don't talk about your job. And I think that's true for a lot of people in law enforcement. And I meet a lot of people when I meet a lot of men that are kind of silent, I can usually tell you're probably in law enforcement, you know, because it's a very distinct kind of like with criminals. I can see, you know, there's a adult guy in his forties riding a bike. He's probably a drug dealer because he lost his license. But again, those are probably not things most people should be dealing with that I got to enter that world and see a side society that I didn't grow up that way. I had no idea that that even existed.
Will Fruin: How does it feel when you actually meet a person that understands you? Like when you're like, I'm a correctional officer too. Does it ever just like, you have that relief or are you able to ever just have that, that dark humor fun where you could actually just feel like, I'm not just a crazy guy in a room. I know that's how I felt when I was a Marine.
Mike Knox: Yeah, I think that for me it was different. It is nice to meet other law enforcement because then you can say they at least understand the craziness that's going on. But also there was such a divide within my department of, people would take the information and use it against you. So you
Will Fruin: Mm-hmm.
Mike Knox: were always watching over your shoulder. One of the great things about retirement is I no longer have people following me around for no reason. because it wasn't just eight hours of your job. was 24 hours a day. mean, they could call you all the time, tell you to come in. You were at the mercy of them. and there would be people, you know, you would say to people, know, Hey, there's somebody following me around from the department. people wouldn't believe you. They just think that you were, you yourself were crazy. and that doesn't happen anymore. Or people telling you what to do all the time. had dozens of supervisors that would come in to your office all the time to tell you what to do. And you had to do it because they were a supervisor. And I don't have that anymore. And it's great. And not to have that hanging over me is such a great feeling. So now when I meet people that are in law enforcement, it's nice that they understand. also I'm like, you're a little crazy for not retiring. Because now I'm meeting people that are, you know, they're in their 60s and they're still, well, I don't know what to do when I retire because they're in that cult and they don't know what how to get out of it. And they are like, well, I'm waiting for the next raise. Or, you know, I don't want to be at home with my wife and they can't see out of. that what they've created. And I think a lot of people fall into that with their job, their job becomes their identity, of course.
Will Fruin: It does because we spend about eight hours through a day, typical person. spend supposed to spend eight hours of sleeping and then eight hours of supposed to be with your best friend. But however, that doesn't always work out that way. It's more of your job is your family and you get stuck there for a very long period of time. And that's also a huge part of your identity. Like my brother, he ended up dying right before he turned 50. He was getting ready to retire as a detective. Awesome dude. had a heart attack. I loved his core's lights and him and I might not seen eye eye and everything, but I loved him. And the thing I remember is that it's like you have this dual relationships with your family and then with your coworkers. you have this, actually not dual relationship, you have these separation of relationships. So when I came back from the core, he was like, you understand how it feels to be in certain situations. Like I can't talk to his wife whose name is Sissy. He's like, can't talk to Sissy about this. I can't talk to other people about this because it doesn't make sense. And I also don't want to impose this fear on them about what we're doing.
Mike Knox: Yeah. mean, like my mom is a, my mom is a total, you know, sixties activist. And, you know, I, I had one time where an inmate had a picture of her because they had like a church function where they had gone in to talk to the inmates or whatever, but my mom had never said anything about it. and my point of view was, Hey, stay away from inmates. And her point of view was they need my help, but she wasn't going to talk to me and I wasn't going to talk to her. And that was kind of mind blowing to me. Like, I really felt like she wasn't being very smart about what she was doing. She was putting herself in these situations. You know, she had another time where she's holding signs protesting against the military. And I was like, why would you do that? And she doesn't even know why she's doing it, but not saying anything about it. And I just always thought like, I should come to me because I know what's going on in a prison. I have a better pulse than other people and she just wouldn't do it. She never once, I mean, my family would never bring up that I worked in a prison, never ask any questions about it. So you're absolutely right. It was really only when I could talk to other people at my, 10 % at my office that actually understood me. And you do, you just push your feelings down. My everyday was just looking for a new place to eat. I was eating my feelings every single day. And that was my outlet, was finding delicious food.
Will Fruin: Well, in America, the caloric intake is something that's huge. And they have this whole thing about food addictions, which people don't realize about how, how much it sucks because they're like, you can just quit drinking. can quit smoking weed or whatever it is, but you just can't quit eating. And when you're looking for desirable food, like LA, you guys have great food over here in Montana. It's, it's okay. And I'm okay with that. It just makes less people want to move here. And, but at the same time, it's like, do you sell somebody, I'm actually having a food addiction because of X, Y, and Z people laugh at you. They're like, and I'm not laughing at you personally, but I feel like that's what they would do to
Mike Knox: Don't worry about
Will Fruin: me. And like, but you know how many people want to actually hear these types of conversations to be like, Hey, you know what? I am a little bit off, but that's okay. I can get better. That's, that's what I've been looking for. and trying to talk to a therapist when you don't know how to use the words it kind of it sucks man
Mike Knox: I mean, I've been to, you know, my parents dropped me off to go to a therapist and they, my dad, my mom and my sister, when I was younger and they drove off and I was in the therapist five days a week. and I just really realized early on in the fifth grade was this is really a one way street. He's looking that he's going to help me, but he doesn't really want to help me because my parents are paying him and he doesn't really want to solve my problems. And then you don't want to tell them too much because then they're going to. tell my parents on me, or they're going to tell somebody
Will Fruin: Mm-hmm.
Mike Knox: else that this kid's having problems. So really I was, I really realized like, this is kind of just a dance that you're doing. you know, my parents are feeling good because they sent me to a therapist. The therapist is feeling good. I'm just, guess I'm going to try to do better, but nothing's really getting done. nothing's getting resolved by that. so it does, it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of different avenues, to get better. And that's the way I always
Will Fruin: First.
Mike Knox: look, you know, I always looked at it like, My mantra is be good, do good. And that's what I try to do every day. I'm a, I have lots of faults, but I just tried to be a good person and try to look at other sides and how people, how other people do feel. Because I do believe, you know, life is a huge struggle for everything. And we kind of see all this, we see all, everything's kind of cut into pieces on social media and everything's, you know, so easy for all the people on social media when it really isn't. It's very hard. Everybody's struggling. Everything's expensive. You know, right now going into a restaurant is four times more expensive. The service is horrible. The food isn't any good. Everything's changed. And I kind of look at that like, well, that's good because my time when I would go into restaurants, that's where my peaceful time, at least it was cheaper and I could afford it and now I can't, but I'm retired. So it's okay.
Will Fruin: I wanted to bring it back to the dance of, your parents would tell you to do that. Like, want you to go there. Therapists would do something. But personally, when I look at it, Mike, nobody actually helps us understand what looking, what the conversation is supposed to be about and how vulnerable can I be with a person? How do I actually build up this trust with a person? Like there is. The pathway for boys and for guys, feel like it's virtually impossible to have that type of dialogue unless somebody is role modeling that things can change as things can heal. And so I wanted to bring back to that because I'm like, when you said that that shit, that hurt and that didn't hurt me personally, but I actually just feel the pain of like, Hey, I want to get better, but everybody else is feeling good. And all I am is just a marionette to somebody else's play.
Mike Knox: Yeah, I just, I mean, I look at it like everything is sales in our society. Everything's kind of bullshit. and you just got to kind of realize my best advice to everybody is realize that it is, nobody's going to be there to help you. really have to help yourself. we're kind of sold this lie that there's all these resources and all these people are here to help us and everybody cares. And in reality, people say that they care, but they really don't. I mean, I saw that with my, when I retired, nobody can, I mean, nobody cared. I just walked out. Nobody cared that retired. Nobody's called me ever since. I kind of laugh at it because when I relay that to other people, they don't say, like, I understand that's horrible. They make a remark of, so what? You're getting the paycheck. And people dismiss your feelings all the time, you know? And so you really do have to have, I always looked at it like you got to lower your expectations of people and keep lowering them and keep lowering them because they're always going to let you down. You kind of got to find your tribe of people. But really for me, I've come to a point where, yes, it's lonely being alone, but it's also where I'm comfortable. I do like myself now. I didn't like myself a long time ago, but that was because I was always listening to what other people were telling me. And people still to this day, doing standup, after the show, people will come up and say, I didn't like that joke. I don't think that works. Okay, but you're not a standup comedian. I don't have to listen to you. But people are still gonna say it and it still hurts. But you just gotta take it day by day and that's what I do just to try to get through it. people, they'll never let you down saying horrible things to you, that's for sure.
Will Fruin: Why did you decide to become a stand-up comedian?
Mike Knox: Well, always, I mean, I was using humor to deflect, especially with my family. was like, I felt at an early age like this, I'm adopted. And so that played a lot to it also, but I always felt kind of a hole in my heart. And I just realized early on, like, I can use humor to kind of get around situations. So I use humor in prison to get away from horrible situations. And I kind of use that in life also. And I had in college, I had a guy that was in a band and he said, Hey, I want you to open for us. So I opened for his band. It went really well. But then I, then when I did it again, I was bombing. That's kind of, realized like music and prison don't go to, not music and comedy don't go well together. but it was, it's a great outlet. It's a great therapy. You get up there and you talk about your vulnerabilities and you talk about, you know, these, these weird stories that you have, and you have a captive audience. They have to listen to you. So, it's not. It's very hard. You've definitely got to work at it. But it's something that I also looked at as I got older was that it's my golf. It's something that I can do and it's something you can get better at. And it really is a sport. You just got to go up there like boxing. You got to get in the ring and you got to start punching people.
Will Fruin: man, that is awesome. The comedians, the one I looked up to a lot was Robin Williams. I thought he was absolutely brilliant. I loved his stand up more than I even loved his movies. And I thought he was a hell of an actor. That guy could play any role that they gave to him. And then the second one is Jimmy Carr because of how fresh, how quick and how intellectual. But you can just tell there's so much pain between the words that they're saying because they have had to live that life for so long. And what made them funny was like that pain. least that's how I look at it. And I think you said Chevy Chase was your guy when you were saying that you role model yourself after.
Mike Knox: I did, I always loved Chevy Chase, but it's kind of that thing, whereas I do believe like you probably shouldn't meet your heroes, because there's just so many horrible things that he's done to people. And I've kind of like, I kind of go through waves of people that I admired and that changes quite a bit, but it's definitely always been, I've always loved comedy. And it was another thing, I was always afraid to go and do comedy, which is another reason that I do comedy. just like the prison, it's the prison scared the hell out of me. And I just thought, you know, if the prison scared me, why can't I go do comedy? so it was always something in the back of my mind. so I would do comedy. would kind of quit. I had to stop for a while because my daughter was very sick. now that I'm retired, I can do it full time. and it's always learning. I'm always learning something. I'm always going in there going, I want to quit this. I don't want to do it. and then coming out the other side going, I learned from this. and that's kind of all the time when I go up on stage. I learned that's, I look at it like I'm always learning something.
Will Fruin: That's how I feel about podcasting. When I get a chance to talk to a person like you or anybody else that I interview, I feel like I'm always learning something from them to different perspectives, like how it is to be a parole officer to a psychologist, to a person that has been molested as a kid. And it's, you hear this whole spectrum. It's just a humanization of it. And on top of it, I don't say it's scary anymore doing this, but if anything, it's just been so relieving. Like you're just following a passion. kind of feel like you're. cup is getting full when you possibly when you do your the pot not by when you do your comedy is anyway people can actually see your comedy
Mike Knox: yeah, I've got it on every, all my social is Mike Knox comedy at Mike Knox comedy. I'm at flap. I'm at flappers comedy club tonight at seven 30. so I'm always posting them always. I'm basically in, I'm in Los Angeles. I'm always local in Los Angeles doing comedy.
Will Fruin: So you also are a writer. What did you write about?
Mike Knox: I've got a book about prison called straight fish. got a book about my daughter's epilepsy, which is called Vivian's rain. My daughter actually has a medical device, like a pacemaker for your brain. that's absolutely saved her life. so I'm a epilepsy advocate. My third book is about, pretty much like, drugs in prison or not prison drugs in college. my, my time when I lived in Santa Barbara. And I have a fourth book that's coming out this month, which is letters that I wrote to Consumer Affairs. There's no really kind of such thing as Consumer Affairs, but I used to write a lot of letters and I'd get free stuff. And with the Internet, nobody even answers your emails anymore. all the letters that I collected over the years where I got free stuff. One of the things that I got was I wrote a nice letter to United Airlines. sent me a free airline ticket, can of peanuts and a hundred dollar gift certificate for drinks on the I mean, it wouldn't happen now. Nobody cares anymore.
Will Fruin: Well, you just cut out quite a bit. Is there a way you could just repeat that last two sentences?
Mike Knox: Sure. I was just saying the United Airlines sent me airline tickets because I wrote a nice, just wrote a letter to them and I write letters, all the emails all the time to companies and they don't even reply anymore. You know, you get AI, you're not even talking to a real person.
Will Fruin: So I had the same type of situation. So I was about to switch my insurance from USA to Geico and they told me, your rates are higher. rates are higher because of X, Y, and Z. I'm like, I have a damn near perfect credit score. So why is that an issue? I don't have a car loan anymore because I paid it off. I used it two years ago, but I paid it off. And I'm like, everything you're trying to penalize me for doesn't make sense. Can I talk to somebody? no, you could talk to an AI person or AI thing and I might. Nope, you're not getting my business. Have a good day.
Mike Knox: Yeah, I had the same thing. have Geico and I've never had an accident and they raised my rate and I said, why would you raise my rate? I've never even had an accident. They gave me a bunch of nonsense and that's how they all are. They raise all the rates for everybody and they just give you one big lie after the next and they know that you're not going to do it. There's nothing you can do because they have a, you know, you can go find somebody else, but it's a pain in the ass to go do that.
Will Fruin: It is a pain in the ass for sure. So you mentioned your daughter's epilepsy. How is it to be a father and a protector of your daughter and how old is your daughter?
Mike Knox: She's 19 now. She started to have seizures at the age of two. So from two to eight, it was just trying to figure out, you know, what was wrong with her and how can we, there's no cure for epilepsy, but how can we minimize her seizures? She ultimately got a vagus nerve stimulator, which she's been nine years seizure free now. But my life from age two to eight with my wife and I were just watching, she was having nocturnal seizures. So was just watching her all night long, then having to go to, to. you know, take her to school or go to work. So it was disrupting our sleep and everything. really just focused on her for a good six to eight years. I still have PTSD from it, but she's got into college. She's getting ready to live on her own and be independent. And that's all that I ever wanted for her.
Will Fruin: how were you and your wife able to navigate that? Because I would think it's a lot of stress in that relationship. And the reason I'm asking is because I'm curious about for other people that are married, that have a kid with special needs, then how were they able to navigate that situation?
Mike Knox: It for me, for us, it was just fear. It was, you didn't have any time to reflect. You really didn't have time to go, this is what I'd like to change. Or this is wrong. It was, Hey, is she going to live through the night? So it was a lot of, you know, for, for me, it was just a lot of praying and I, know, please, please, please somebody help me. and finding doctors that were horrible and finding doctors that were good. Just trying to find a hospital and somebody that would, see your side to things. I mean, there was a lot of waiting. You know, we'd wait five hours at UCLA to see a doctor for 10 minutes that would say, I don't know what to tell you. There's nothing you can do about it. You know, that was, it was a world renowned doctor that said your daughter's not going to live past second grade. You know, she's not going to mentally be able to complete second grade. You know, she's, you know, there's no hope for her. Uh, it was, a lot of hopelessness. Uh, but I, I could at least depend on my wife. Um, and I think we're a good team. And that was my only goal was to save my child's life.
Will Fruin: So you're kind of grieving two identities too with leaving the parole, then also with your daughter being out on her own. How is that like, have you started to take that in of like how you're going to handle that?
Mike Knox: Yeah. And again, it's like, there's nothing. I just look at it like, uh, she's 19 now. Yes, she does need some help. Um, but she in the eyes of society is an adult. It's, know, I kind of laugh because I took her to, she's getting her license. She's getting her driver's license. So I took her to the DMV and the DMV people are like, sir, she's an adult. You're not allowed to intervene, let her speak. And it's like, funny because the transition for our society is once you're 18, you're supposed to know everything. And even though she's considered an adult. She doesn't, how would she know anything about the DMV? She's never been to the DMV. doesn't, you know, she doesn't know what a absolute dumpster fire it is. or same with the bank. She doesn't know how to get a bank account. Shouldn't we be able to help them or at least note, Hey, these are still kids. She's still in high school. so I just use kind of humor and laugh. And I know that whatever we're kind of approaching, there's going to be problems. Like, I'm trying to get scholarships for her because of her epilepsy. So I need a doctor's note. but I can't get a hold of the doctor that she's had for the last 15 years because they have an AI support system. So I can't email them or call. So I've got to physically now go down to the hospital to get them to sign the form physically. They can't email it to me because I can't get ahold of anybody. So again, I've just known that they're always going to let me down and just keep pushing forward. And I do believe There's always a third option. things are always going to work out. They're just not going to kind of work out the way you thought they were going to work out. But, it's not been great, but it's, it has always worked out.
Will Fruin: And my friend Chelsea, wrote, she said her aunt had seizures for 55 years and she wasn't supposed to live past 13. Unlike... I never had kids and what I can actually hear in your voice, because your voice actually changed a different reflection when you start talking about your daughter. Like it was about the ignorance of the system. The one shot, one size fits all. Like this is where they start looking at it as colorblind racism or people or colorblind discrimination where they say, Hey, you're just because this is supposed to work for people. You're not including everybody else on how this is going to impact. And like this is a huge issue why they've been trying to push like equity instead of just equality of saying, hey, your daughter is 19 years old. She should be able to do this and navigate this on her own. Mike, I understand you being a father, get the hell out of the way, but not understanding the other conditions of what you need to do to be able to provide the services for your daughter.
Mike Knox: Yeah, and those are things, you know, like they her school refused to keep her medication, her life saving medication on campus. But they would keep the medication of kids who had peanut allergies. So it was always a struggle. You know, I would walk her to class. The school didn't like me being on campus. They didn't like the parents walking their kids to campus. I just ignored them. They didn't like us being late. They would always, you know, huge battles. Had to contact lawyers quite a few times because the schools wouldn't do anything. Had to contact lawyer. few times because the epilepsy foundations wouldn't do anything. The epilepsy foundations do absolutely nothing. You would think that they're there to help you, but all they do, they're there for fundraising. So everybody was consistent in letting me down, but I was never going to let my child down. And so, yeah, it pained me a lot. It pained me, especially at work when my boss would make fun of my daughter. And there's really not much I can do because the, business is protecting him and he's a horrible person. I just have to, there's a reason this is happening. I have to look past this. I have to focus on my daughter's health. And that has been a blessing is focusing on my daughter's health is, you know, kept me, you know, I don't focus on these, all this other nonsense that goes on in the world. I just focus on my family. And I think that that's the key to life when you're focusing on the things that are in front of you that you have control over. I don't have control over so much stuff that's thrown in front of our faces. And I do feel very bad for kids now. You my daughter brought up to me, you know, my phone brings me all of this violence every day and I don't even
Will Fruin: Mm-hmm.
Mike Knox: have time to talk to about it. I'm at school and I see that somebody got assassinated or I see that some, you know, there's a war going on and I wasn't even prepared for that and I don't think that's fair. And I think that that's a fair assumption from her. All these kids are getting all this information that I certainly never got. It's too much information.
Will Fruin: Like I went to a cup of coffee with my buddy yesterday and he's a guy that I really confide in certain stuff. And the reason I'm actually bringing this up to this, it's like, he's like, well, how are you dealing with today's political climate? said, honestly, Rod, I don't have time for this. Like, I'm like, nope, I don't have time to look at all this crap. This is just nonsense to me. I am just too busy with life right now. where if I was to get absorbed into an area that I have no control over, I would lose my mind.
Mike Knox: Yeah, and I think that that's the design. I can tell you, I do not care. But I do care that all of our tax dollars are being spent in places that shouldn't be spent. But there's nothing I can do about it. I
Will Fruin: Mm-hmm.
Mike Knox: just paid my property taxes of $9,500. $2,500 of that has nothing to do with my property. So those are the things that I've got to do as a homeowner. I don't have to, you know, I can't stop them from where they spend my money. So I just, again, focus on what's in front of me and my tasks that I got to do. And again, I do every single day, I'm like, all I can do is kind of the AA mantra of all I can do is today, the 24 hours that I have to get this day. And I'm just thankful. I'm thankful that my daughter's health, number one, and I'm just thankful that I'm still here after all this time.
Will Fruin: Sounds like you're an amazing father. You can just tell how much you care about your daughter and you care about your wife. It's great to hear that even with the society and the climate that you were in didn't change you too much and you're still an advocate for people that don't have the voices.
Mike Knox: Yeah, yes, I am. I do try to, you know, a lot of the comedians are young and a lot of them have what I didn't realize before. Everybody's moving to Los Angeles. So kind of when they look at you that I grew up in Los Angeles and they kind of are like, well, why aren't you famous by now? Because it's a work. It's job. It's work. And people are moving here because they want to become famous. And I think if you just look at it like a job. Like in life, life is a job. Whether you're, you don't have to do anything, you just got to exist. But don't be mean to other people. Things are gonna be okay. If you're nice to people, they're gonna be nice back to you. And I do think at the core, everybody, they are good. And I think good always beats evil.
Will Fruin: Well, I hope so. do. So Mike, what would be a message that you want people to know about you? And then also what is a message that you want to be able to give to people that are listening to this?
Mike Knox: I don't have a message to anybody, but I do want people to have a good life. think life is in the aspect of mental health. Everybody's going through a struggle every single day and to pause and to appreciate what it is that we do have. Because I do think life is a gift. It's just hard to kind of see through all of the nonsense of it to see what it's about. For anybody, it's find something that you love to do and do your best to have fun doing it.
Will Fruin: Mike, I'm going to ask you again, can you please tell us how you built to find your books and also some of the recordings of your standup?
Mike Knox: Sure, you can go to Mike Knox.com or at Mike Knox Comedy on YouTube. I'm always on Instagram and TikTok. Any social media, that's where you can find my books. You can email me, I'll send you my book. Because nobody reads.
Will Fruin: Do you like going to people? No, have to agree and I'll disagree at the same time. I know I've been learning to read a lot and I've been trying to buy everybody's book that I interview because it's just to me, it's like you spent the time giving me your time. And I value everybody's relationship that I have the pleasure of talking to and interacting with. It's just been absolutely a delight.
Mike Knox: And I do too. That's why I always love doing anybody's podcast and talking about my story. do think everybody does love prison, especially that, but I love talking about, you know, there's 60 million people with epilepsy. There's no cure for epilepsy. It's been around thousands of years. So for me to be able to talk about it, it really opens up that door to people then going, yeah, my, you know, my relative has epilepsy. And it really is that one-on-one conversation. to then educate people about epilepsy. So I do enjoy doing that.
Will Fruin: So you actually said vagus nerve stimulator.
Mike Knox: Biggest nerve stimulator.
Will Fruin: So if I remember correctly, it's the rest and digest area, the component. how, why does it actually help with the epilepsy?
Mike Knox: So we have a vagus nerve that goes to your brain and then there's one that goes to your stomach. And so they have a little generator and it's sending electronic impulses to your vagus nerve. So it's actually interrupting the seizures. So for my daughter who's having them all the time, it's just interrupting them. So she's not having them. And beyond that, was also, you know, the first time that I really realized that it was working was my daughter woke my wife and I up. She had gotten dressed, she'd made lunch, made breakfast. She put a Lego set together. She said, I want to go to school. So this is a little girl that was heavily medicated that could barely communicate really. When I look back at videos, it's very sad. I would always have to wake her up. I would have to dress her. I would have to, know, physically take her to places. And here's somebody that it was like, she's got her independence. It's like a light bulb switched on and we're driving to school. And prior to that, she was always very silent and coming from comedy background, it was very sad for me that I couldn't joke around with her. And that particular day she told me a joke, you know, silly dad joke. And I was like, this thing's working. So even beyond stopping her seizures, it's allowed her to now she's her mind's working again. She's allowed to I mean, this is a kid that went from. Never think she was going to be able to read to her grade point average of three point nine. So it's three times higher than my grade point average. And got into college. never got into any college. so she, that device was something that, this is helping her learn. She's actually learning now, which her everything was stunted because of her seizures. mean, it was basically taking away her entire life. So it's been such a great medical device. But again, it's the pharmaceutical companies that run everything. So. There's kind of that battle going on. And she is a nine year seizure free and just a happy teenager.
Will Fruin: I want to say that the one of the people listening, she's a mom of a special needs. And she said, your message really spoke to her and the lack of support is extremely frustrating.
Mike Knox: It is, and my heart goes out to everybody that is dealing with anything. really see that, you know, every year I go to Disneyland Expo for epilepsy and everybody is so fractured. Cause everybody is when they're dealing with, speak to so many different parents. And it's just so heartbreaking when it's your, you know, it's your child and you're trying to get other people to hear your story and people don't want to hear it. And that unfortunately is what I see a lot also.
Will Fruin: And I believe these are why these conversations are important to have. It's like it
Mike Knox: Very important.
Will Fruin: to me like mental health is not just a person with a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia. The physical situation creates a hardship. I have had the pleasure of working at the VA for three years before I started going to my grad program. And people that were not able to communicate by talking or by hearing, they started to become more depressed because they started pulling themselves away because they didn't want to agitate people. then watching how their spouses or watching their spouse, the person that's eroding, not being able to communicate and how much it hurt them and watching how it was just like this cesspool pulling people away. And if you have a child that actually you genuinely love and you're genuinely advocating for and everybody's just pretty much saying our system is just to collect money it's not for you It's heartbreaking.
Mike Knox: Yeah, and there are, I have found one or two organizations that are okay, but the majority of them are absolutely, you know, they get money from the state or the feds or donations and they'll do like a walk, you know, and you kind of find out where the money is going. It's going right back to them. It's not going to the research, which it should be going to. And unfortunately with epilepsy, because there's no cure for it. they don't even want to consider trying to you know, putting, pouring money into it, you know? And it really, mean, epilepsy kills more than, I don't want to make a comparison, but it's, you know, more people dying from seizures than breast cancer. So the numbers are all there. The people are, you know, especially with sudden unexplained epilepsy in children. It's just a devastating for so many people and so many. families that are losing their loved ones and kind of nothing. It's not really something that people want to talk about. And I think because it's your brain and it's hard for people to convey, to communicate what they're going through with mental illness or with epilepsy, special needs.
Will Fruin: Well, I appreciate that insight. really do, Mike. And I appreciate you making the time to come on here and talk with
Mike Knox: Well, I appreciate you. mean, there's so many people that I reach out to and they hear epilepsy, they don't want to discuss it because it's not, you know, glittery, I guess. So I do thank you very much for letting me talk about it.
Will Fruin: I anytime and I'm honestly it's you could just tell the or at least I can tell about how passionate you are about it and it's like how much it's really hurting it. I believe giving a voice to other people and you actually given the voice like I said my friend she has special needs child and it's it creates all these barriers in other people's lives that where people are not able to talk or they able to communicate because people just shut them down and or they don't have the same type of empathy to be able to say, wow, like, can you stop talking about your kids so we can actually talk about something else? And they don't realize that what's happening with your child is very consuming because it is your whole life. And I believe that it's extremely valuable to have that conversation instead of just saying, baby, go sit in the corner.
Mike Knox: Yeah, that was something that I, you you brought up empathy and that's what I, all I ever wanted from the doctor's offices was just some sort of empathy of what my wife and I were going, my daughter, of course, was going through. And I think that that's what we lack a lot of times because when we're going through all these kind of going through, you know, I went through a time where it was like, I want to get to a point where I don't have to go to the doctor and listen to these professionals tell me what's wrong with my child. I just want, I just wanted empathy from people. And I never really got that and that always bothered me.
Will Fruin: Well, hopefully I was able to give you a little bit on this episode and I want to say thank you so much for your time,
Mike Knox: You did.
Will Fruin: Mike.
Mike Knox: Thank you. Appreciate it.
Will Fruin: How do you think it went?
Mike Knox: How do you think it went?